England Football Fans - Unfair Reputation?

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*cringes* football, football. Soccer just makes me think of entirely different game.

As for the English football fans: bad reputation is the worst thing to get rid of. Hooliganism will always be around. Comes with the passionate nature of the game. I don't approve of it, not at all, but it's very difficult to control imho.

As BA said, the atmosphere when a match is in progress is just...unbelievable.

It's the only thing that manages to make us Flemings feel like Belgians.

 

England's rep is from the 70's and 80's mostly, nowadays it is more or less only Millwall fans and Chelsea fans who are real moronic hooligans. So yes, the current rep is undeserved in relation to todays reality but it is not undeserved if we look at things historically.

Right now I think Italian teams has the worst fans but they are violent and dangerous to their own teams, clubs and the referees, not so much towards other fans. Inter - Milan last week is a shining example when the Inter fans threw in hundreds if fireworks and some struck Dida the Milan keeper. The game had to be aborted and Milan got the win by default with 3-0.

I would also like to say that almost all bigger football clubs in Europe have their fair share of shaved morons with too much beer and too little brains. The sad tihng is that 30 drunken idiots can manage to wreck a game viewed by 30 000 people and create a media ruckus worthy of a minor war.

 

Someone here said there never anything happened in Cardiff ? Excuse, but maybe that's the case with rugby, but of all footballfans with a bad rep in Britain, the ones from Cardiff come awfully close to being the worst of them all.

And i dare you to enter Yankee stadium with a Redsox cap, you'll never make it out of the Bronx in one piece.

Ever saw Canadian hockeyfans in action ? I have seen footage from fans in Vancouver and Montreal, and it's pretty much the same as in football. Yes football, that's the name of the game, what do you think the F.C. in a lot of clubnames stands for ?

On a sidenote...we just hit rockbottom again ourselves this afternoon. Feyenoord was playing Ajax, and it was a complete warzone again, which will probably result in a nationwide banning of all visiting fans from all the stadiums. One idiot also went to the stadium with a homemade bomb, which exploded in his pocket, and blew his pecker off.

 

I still think that some of the reasons you people have listed as to why soccer-rage happens are pretty flimsy, especially when you talk about passion. I'm pretty passionate about the sports teams I support, but even I cranked up the passion exponentially, I still can't in my wildest dreams imagine being SO passionate about my teams that I would feel compelled to violently attack someone. It just makes no sense to use sports as an excuse.

When the All Blacks lost the semi final of the last rugby world cup to Australia, I was so gutted I went and sulked in my bed for the rest of the day. I sure as hell didn't go out and beat up the first Aussie I saw.

 

i just had a stretchy thought.

English football is fast pace end to end. Fans are conditioned to get a lot of action. If they are not stimulated enough or de-stimulated, they find their own action. German, Italian, Spanish football have slower pace. Their more organization and defensive style. Thus, their fans are well conditioned to little to no action at all. They only get upset and go berserk once a while. But overall, football fans, or any fans for that matter, are both passionate and irrational. Passion and irrationality translate to violence.

yeah, i am stretching it.

 

Those are rare cases in Canada, despite all the success and everything that Canadian hockey has had since the 1950's there have only been two cases of riots. Vancouver in 1994, and Montreal in the 60's or 50's. Vancouver was after the Vancouver Canucks lost in the Stanley Cup finals and Montreal was after Jean Beliveu (then the best player in the world was suspended for the entire playoffs).

Saying it's a national pride thing doesn't work if you ask me, same with alcohol. In 2004 when Team Canada defeated Team USA to win the gold medal there were no riots, no violence, nothing. People partied in the streets and massive quantities of alcohol was consumed but there was nothing like what happens in European countries after/before/during a soccer game. We've also haven't had fans trampled in a stadium because of hooligans and violence.

I think it has to do with what BOC said about different classes, religions, and groups of people clashing, not just soccer/football fans haveing it out.

 

I think I've made this comment in one of your other threads. Something to do with Moriniho been punished by UEFA - that Barcelona incident with the ref and rjikaard was a complete joke.
We all can see English clubs/supporters get punished with much more severity than anywhere else. This in partly is due to our chequered history and also I think partly jealousy, our leagues are the richest and have the most history. Also that prat Sepp Blatter does not help he is so anti-english its unbeleivable (whats his nationality then ).
The anti English setiments in EUFA have been around for a long time. I remember when the Hillsborough tradegy occured and some of the EUFA officials were already blaming holigans and talking about bans, even before the results of the official inquiry.
UEFA really p*ss me off - they continually bite the hand that feeds them.

 

@teekc

i noticed something to the contrary myself. imo English Football has a lot of play-setting and so on while the few games I've seen in the Spanish League are more on "gimme the ball I'm gonna make a run for it"

 

One other thing, i've been in such discussions before on other boards, and Americans seem to take pride in the fact that they don't have any hooligans in their sportsarenas. That may be true, but their big cities have something that's pretty rare in Europe, and that's the hordes of hoodlums that roam the streets, the gangs in the housingprojects.

I think i prefer our "only on sundays" nutcases over those characters any day.

 

I've attacked the TV before but that's about as far as I go.

 

Who remembers the English Fans playing up at France 98?

Ok hands down, who remembers the policeman that German fans nearly killed and will now live the rest of his live in a wheel chair?

Ahh whats that one? Maybe two.

Ok lets go again, who's heard of the Helsinki disaster?

How about the Turkish fans that murdered two leeds fans?

A few more this time...

Who thinks that the Liverpool fans were unconditionaly to blame for the helsinki disaster?

Can we say scape goat, sacrificial lamb? No they are no angels but they didnt kill those Juventus fans, the wall collapsed, why did it collapse, because the stadium was delapitated so when the Liverpool fans charged it collapsed, and why did the Liverpool fans charge? Surely it had nothing to do with the poor seating arangments? Nah must be because they were goaded by the Juventus fans? Nope its because they like to attack women and children and kill them.

I don't mean to offend just to try and back up the OP's statements about how hypocritical the Football governing bodies are.

 

I just don't see what Helsinki has got to do with the whole situation.

 

Football: A gentlemans game played by hooligans.
Rugby: A hooligans game played by gentleman.

I agree BA, it's disgusting how English fans are treated now-a-days compared to their foreign counterparts who behave a whole lot worse.

 

That is complete and utter nonsense. Do you seriously believe that?

 

When was the last time you heard monkey chanting and racist gestures at black players in England? In fact, do you even go to football games regularly?

Racism has been largely stamped out of the English game. I suggest you see how lax some other countries are on racism and get a bit of knowledge before you make judgements mate.

 

Yes, I have been to quite a few games this season at Villa Park and The Hawthorns. If racism has been stamped out, they must have missed the west midlands entirely by the looks of things.

 

Must have mate. I have a season ticket at Chesterfield, and there is never any racist chanting or anything. I mean, if anyone ever shouts something racist, people either give them the eye or just tell them to shut the front door like.

 

You mean to tell me that the National Front isn't active anymore in and around the stadiums ? I find that hard to believe, the majority of Chelsea fans were as racist as it gets a few years ago. They probaly figured out how silly it looked with all the dark players on their team and all, but the thoughts are still there. I remember a story i read from a few fans who traveled abroad to see England play....England won 3-1, but to them the final score was 2-1, because one of England's goals was made by John Barnes, and a goal from a nigger didn't count in their way of thinking.